INTRODUCTION: Mesial temporal sclerosis is not a frequent cause of refractory epilepsy in children, and the its start age is uncertain. OBJECTIVE: To understand the clinic feature of children with mesial temporal sclerosis diagnosis. MATERIAL AND METHODS: It was done a literature review about this pathology in children, and it has been found a group of 4 articles that allow a general view about mesial temporal sclerosis in children and other group of 7 articles (case reports or small series) in which mesial temporal sclerosis was diagnosed until five years old. RESULTS: It was evaluated in the first group, febrile seizure that was the most frequent antecedent followed by a status epilepticus and the semiology of the seizures was characterized by oroalimentary automatism, gestural automatism, stunted movement and motor phenomenon.The group of children with mesial temporal sclerosis until five years old stood out due to the high incidence of status epilepticus (84,6%), by the number of children with altered neuropsycomotor development (46%), and by lesion in most of bilateral cases (53,8%) , suggesting that the bilateral form of the mesial temporal sclerosis might be a distinct pathology, and not necessarily the progression of a unilateral beginning picture. Another important thing to stand out in this group is the documentation by MR in edema in hippocampus after a status epilepticus and posterior atrophy of this structure. CONCLUSION: mesial temporal sclerosis can to appear still in early life and in any cases can to present an evolutional character and dependent from a previous aggression to the hippocampus.
temporal lobe epilepsy; child; adolescent; sclerosis; hippocampus
